As Earth Day approaches, the environment is making the news. Although the Green New Deal failed in the Senate on March 26, the issues it raises are bound to play a major role in the 2020 presidential race. With the future of environmental regulation uncertain, check out these four fun facts about the history of this area of law:

• The first environmental regulations were nuisance laws. Before there were statutes explicitly targeting environmental use and misuse, there were nuisance claims, which allowed for theories of liability if a person’s actions caused their neighbor’s land to flood or smell bad (think sewage). Although you probably don’t think about the nuisance doctrine when you hear “environmental law,” this legal theory is still used today. For example, plaintiffs living near hog farms have used nuisance actions to sue over the noxious odors.
• The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 is still good law. This year is the 120th birthday of the first environmental legislation ever passed in the United States, which criminalized the dumping of refuse into navigable waters, among other activities. The Clean Water Act now supersedes certain provisions of the Rivers and Harbors Act, but because of the complexities of administrative law, this old statute has not retired yet.
• State level Environmental Protection Agencies have a lot of work to do. You are probably familiar with the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but each state also administers an EPA, which are responsible for enforcing both federal and state regulations. Different states make environmental laws to address their specific circumstances – for example, Florida bans the sale of many kinds of snakes, and permits python bounty hunters, in order to protect native animals from invasive species.
• Climate change is creating new kinds of litigation. Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law has created a database of climate-related litigation, including claims under such diverse legal theories as nuisance claims(!) and the Freedom of Information Act. The attorneys in one such lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, recently took the unprecedented step of filing for an injunction on new leases for fossil fuel extraction.

To learn more about the development of environmental law, read the full article and check out Lawline’s 2019 Energy & the Environment CLE series.